Arianna Huffington may be the queen of the blogosphere, but she's not above taking dictation.

On a conference call with her last week, Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel started "going on about the writers' strike and what he was thinking," Huffington recently said while sipping coffee in the New York office of her Huffington Post blog.

"I said, 'That's a blog,'" she recalled, in her inimitable Greek accent. "And so he started dictating his blog."

Who was transcribing?

"I was," Huffington said.

If it's hard to imagine the elegantly dressed, carefully groomed Huffington taking dictation like an unwashed desk jockey straight out of The Front Page, adjust your thinking. For a well-informed insight, juicy scooplet of news, or boldfaced name that can draw more traffic to her electronic salon, she is willing to roll up her sleeves.

"Give me a good blog and I will take dictation," she purred, turning on her legendary charm.

Huffington's "just do it" attitude helps to explain why the Huffington Post has become one of the most popular political websites on the internet, with more than 4 million visitors per month, according to company officials. (Nielsen puts the figure at 1.4 million a month.) Two and a half years after launching the site to derision and even ridicule, Huffington has defied the naysayers and established herself as a power on the Web.

Huffington and her business partners are hoping to capitalize on what they call "the cascade effect" of Web news, while dodging the hazards of operating a website that relies heavily on the as yet unpaid labor of others.

Huffington knows that the site's greatest asset is its stable of 1,800 bloggers. While none blog for money, she is aware that some sort of remuneration may be in order. To that end, Huffington is toying with a revenue-sharing model that would let her bloggers direct a portion of the site's ad revenue to a charity of their choice.

These are pretty heady days for Huffington and her team, which includes new C.E.O. Betsy Morgan, top editor Roy Sekoff, and a few dozen twentysomethings who write and edit in the website's offices in the Soho district of Manhattan and in Los Angeles. (Disclosure: last year I wrote two music reviews for the Huffington Post. I was not paid.)

As the HuffPo's traffic has begun to snowball over the past several months, the site has expanded its coverage to include entertainment and business news, hired a team of paid reporters, and co-hosted a presidential debate. Last Friday, Huffington and crew introduced the comedy news site 236.com, a joint venture with Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp.

Growing traffic has translated directly into growing revenue for Huffington Post, although the proprietor said it has yet to be consistently profitable.